Long sufferers,
The day did not begin well.
No sooner than we had settled into our free seats [courtesy of the Twisted Darkie, thanks Christopher] in the MA Noble Stand concourse, than the Good Lady Wife offered me a half eaten pie to finish off.
Only succeeded in squeezing the remaining contents out of the Four'n'Twenty directly into my freshly poured cold beer that hadn't had a sip taken out of it, so the bits of texturised protein sank to the bottom of the cup, adding a unique gravy flavour to an already rather ordinary ale.
It all went downhill from there
The first half was dire; about as dire as a game of modern day Rules can get.
Four goals each to the long break, with the Swans entirely goaless in the second quarter.
Joisus.
With stacks on the mill de rigueur and the ball on the ground most of the time, Mr Nallatamby likened it to a giant game of Twister with 36 contestants involved.
It was that interesting and absorbing that punters in the bleachers resorted to reading their Sunday newspapers, chatting to each other about what they had for breakfast, and where, and talking loudly about the brilliant new 'small bar' in the eastern suburbs they discovered this week.
That sort of batshit boring display that will no doubt attract devotees of the other football codes across to the great Australian game in droves - not.
Wouldn't want to be the bloke in charge of selling that to the Great Unwashed of Greater Western Sydney as an example of what they will be getting for their money next year.
It only got worse.
When you can't even get close to kicking ten goals in a match on your home ground, something has to be seriously wrong you would have thought.
Never mind that Buddy Franklin ran rings around them and kicked six goals to single handedly win the game and was a loose man more often than not, for gawd's sake, or that the Swans suffered a complete reversal on last week and had seven goals kicked on them in the Championship Quarter this week.
Crikey.
Swans backs looked like headless chooks, while the forwards did nothing.
The ruck was inneffective, and the mid-field clueless as they were pinned down by simple manning up by the Hawks to a positional play plan.
Two free kicks right in front of us towards the end of the third quarter gifted the Hawks easy gimmee goals; the second of which had the crowd going absolutely apeshit all around us as The Goodes Train was penalised for doing absolutely nothing at all.
The vehmency suprised me; something rarely witnessed at a Swans game, where the barracking is usually polite and reserved in comparison to what goes on down Mexico way.
Needless to say, all in our party needed no persausion to join in - on my feet screaming and gesticulating like some kind of Whirling Dervish.
Some mong Bamford by the name of Jacob Mollison, who looked like a prancing weed, was responsible for awarding both joke frees, and didn't he cop a bollocking?
The home crowd just thankful that "Be Kind to Umpires" week, was last week.
So, the Swans robbed blind in the back half of the Championship Quarter, never mind that they were being comprehensively outplayed and were simply outclassed at the time, it still ruined any slim chance they might have had of getting back into the game.
The Miracle Man Malceski in his first game back 74 days after radical controversial knee surgery, when he should have been out for the season, was probably the best of a bad bunch, but you'd have to wonder what the likes of him and other tough nuts like the Great Irishman, Bolton, J. et al were thinking while they were winning the hard ball, only to see any opportunity frittered away by inexperienced children who found themselves out of their depth.
The game was done and dusted by the three quarter time siren, and patrons went back to reading their newspapers in the break before flocking in large numbers to the bars to drown their sorrows, with many, many thousands of others simply streaming out of the ground altogther as fast as they could.
At least this time they didn't have to cook the turnstile books as the place was fairly full from the off
But, by the final hooter the ground only held the long suffering faithful few to see the Swans make a hurried hanging-their-heads disappearance from the playing arena.
Hawthorn had a big cheer squad and a well populated supporters bay, and of course, they delighted in rubbing it in.
Swear blind after the debacle was all over and we made our dejected way out the Member's Gate to the event bus station in Moore Park that we saw a man with a guide dog in the queue for the Circular Quay bus.
Why on earth would a blind man want to go to the football, unless, as the GLW remarked, he was a member of the Bamfords Appreciation Society, or it was some kind of sick publicity stunt on behalf of the umpire's sponsors, OPSM?
Coach Horse would have had a lot of steam coming out of his ears down by the Magic Waters at Bronte at Monday morning smoko, finding himself with plenty running through his mind as he ponders the mid-season crossroads.
SYDNEY: 4.1, 4.4, 6.8, 8.12 (60). Goals: McGlynn 3, Everitt, McVeigh, Jetta, Malceski, Shaw.
HAWTHORN: 3.2, 4.8, 11.14, 15.16 (106). Goals: Franklin 6, Hodge 2, Bateman, Rioli, Roughead, Breust, Shiels, Osborne, Burgoyne.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 33,136.
Tigers fans were happy enough to take the get out of jail free card and the two points in one of the worst matches played by any two teams this year.
Both sides made unforced error after unforced error and at times you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a game of under-12's.
Ball skills had the appearance of players who had spent the week at the pub.
Didn't help that the Bamford's were whistle-happy - giving away penalties with gay abandon.
It was only a freak touch of Marshall magic at the denoument that got them home by the skin of their very teeth.
The Best Leb In The Game single handedly kept the whole shebang together with not much help from anyone, in a game Balmain richly deserved to lose.
For a coach who is usually of unflappable demeanour, SC Sheens reportedly gave the team an almighty post match dressing room spray, after commanding them all to stand to attention and listen very carefully to what he had to say.
He then gave them both barrels on interview on his way to the car park, describing his charges as "stupid" and "embarrassing", and you could tell by the tenor of his voice that he dearly wanted to call someone, anyone, an "idiot".
Sensibly, he left it at the throw away line "they've got to grow up, and wake up, and that starts this week".
"If we play like that again, St George will lap us by 100".
Enuff said.
WESTS TIGERS 20. Tries: Ayshford, Brown, Dwyer, Marshall. Goals: Marshall (2).
PENRITH PANTHERS 18. Tries: Coote, Iosefa, Simmons. Goals: Walsh (3).
At Campbelltown Sports Ground.
Crowd: 16,172.
Footnote.
Does anyone else in the known universe hold a Pie Floater Party on the opening night of State of Origin?
No idea how a very odd South Australian institution was carried with me and transplanted smack bang in the middle of uncouth rugby league territory, and came to be cooked anuually to mark the start of the centrepiece of the heathen caper.
It's a tradition in my household that dates back at least 20 years; certainly to the time when King Wally Lewis reigned supreme and Balmain players of the ilk of Sirro, Blocker, Back Door Benny, and the indefatigable Wayne Junior Pearce were regularly picked for New South Wales.
My children have known nothing else around about the last Wednesday in May, and they now insist that the floater must be prepared for the state-on-state mate-on-mate pipe opener, while acknowleging, as they do, that Dad has willingly made a rod for his own back.
Two days of laborious work is involved in making the proper pea soup; the endless boiling and skimming of the smoked ham hocks with a poultice of onions, some garlic and celery stalks, perhaps a carrot for sweetness, a few bay leaves with a large bunch of parsley from the garden, and a goodly dose of freshly pounded black pepper and 'secret spices', before the fatty skin is stripped from the hocks, the bones removed, and the split peas are added on the second day to boil away to a mush, then the whole being put through the blender to make a homogenous mix, before being boiled and cooked some more, then seasoned to taste.
The simmering soup is ladled steaming into shallow bowls, and topped i.e. "floated" with a piping hot meat pie out of the oven, [no need for gourmet here, frozen Four'n'Twenty's from the supermarket will do], then dressed in the best white wine vinegar, or for the effete, the finest Spanish sherry, along with lashings of Rosella, and it must be Rosella brand tomato sauce.
Nothing else is required.
However gruesome it looks, the result is a very tasty bolt indeed that lines the stomach nicely for an evening of convivial drinking while watching Good v Evil play out the contest to the death.
The traditional drinking accompaniment to the floater is Coopers Sparkling Ale, although in recent years, as the nostalgaista begin to grow old, a full-bodied meaty Cab Sav Shiraz has become an acceptable tipple.
A once a year novelty that's yet to wear off.
